Wednesday, November 30, 2011

GEICO World Bowling Tour Finals Kicks Off Bowling Coveage

An international journey that began in Helsinki, Finland, in January 2011 and
ended 10 months later in Las Vegas will kick off the Professional Bowlers
Association (PBA)’s 2011-12 television season Sunday when the men’s and women’s finals
of the inaugural GEICO World Bowling Tour(WBT)Finals presented by the Professional Bowlers Association airs at 1
p.m. ET on ESPN.

The men’s field will
feature reigning PBA Player of the Year Mika Koivuniemi, a resident of Hartland,
MI, who returned to his native Finland to win the Brunswick Ballmaster Open
and take a lead in the WBT points race that he never gave up. The World Tenpin
Bowling Association’s inaugural World Bowling Tour series included stops in
France, Kuwait, Thailand, Korea and Australia, plus the U.S. Open and United
States Bowling Congress Masters.

In Sunday’s WBT
men’s final, Koivuniemi will meet the winner of a one-game match between No. 2
qualifier Sean Rash of Suburban Chicago (Montgomery, IL), and No. 3 Jason Belmonte of Australia.
Rash and Belmonte made news over the summer after a confrontation over
distractions Belmonte allegedly made with his plastic water bottle during the
PBA’s GEICO Team Shootout series in Chicago.

In the one-hour
women’s finals which immediately follows the men’s finals on ESPN, Carolyn
Dorin-Ballard of Keller, Texas, a PBA Women’s Series champion and 20-time
Professional Women’s Bowling Association title winner, will meet the winner of a
match between veteran Swedish star Nina Flack and her Team Sweden teammate,
20-year-old Sandra Andersson.

The winner in each
division will receive $10,000. Second place will pay $6,000 and third will
receive $4,000.

The GEICO World
Bowling Tour Finals are the first shows in an 18-event PBA Tour series that will
air on Sundays on ESPN, concluding with the live PBA Tournament of Champions
telecast from Red Rock Lanes in Las Vegas on April 15. In addition to the ESPN
telecasts, the PBA will produce four Xtra Frame Tour events which will be
webcast exclusively on the PBA’s online bowling channel.

Xtra Frame also will air a World Bowling Tour Finals pre-game show
starting Wednesday and will immediately follow the ESPN telecast with a
post-game show. To subscribe to Xtra Frame, visit pba.com and click on the Xtra
Frame logo.